1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a safety confirmation system for confirming safety of a user based on current location information of a mobile terminal and, more particularly, to a safety confirmation system and a safety confirmation method utilizing an early disaster information (or disaster quick report) delivery service for the mobile terminal. The present invention further relates to a mobile terminal for use in the safety confirmation system and a computer program implemented in the mobile terminal.
2. Description of Related Art
It is very important to confirm safety of family members or friends after occurrence of a disaster such as an earthquake, and in recent years, a system that uses a mobile terminal to confirm the safety is proposed.
For example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2010-087683 describes the following system. A mobile terminal transmits a disaster reception signal to a center apparatus upon receiving early disaster information, and the center apparatus confirms presence/absence of a movement of the mobile terminal based on current location information of the mobile terminal upon receiving the disaster reception signal from the mobile terminal and determines that a user of the mobile terminal is in an emergency state when the movement of the mobile terminal cannot be confirmed. In this system, the user of the mobile terminal inputs a safety status indicating whether the user is safe or not and transmit a safety confirmation signal from the mobile terminal, whereby the safety status of the user is determined.
Further, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. 2010-263562 proposes a system in which safety information is shared by an information-sharing group upon occurrence of a disaster. In this system, when a disaster occurs, a disaster information management server delivers disaster information indicating disaster areas, evacuation area, and the like. Upon receiving the disaster information, a mobile terminal uses a GPS function to create terminal location information, determines a safety status of a user of the mobile terminal based on the disaster information and terminal location information, creates safety information indicating the safety status of the user, and transmits the safety information and the terminal location information to another mobile terminal previously registered in the same information-sharing group.
Most people put priority on ensuring their safety during and immediately after occurrence of an earthquake and therefore they fail to make a move to conform the safety of their family members or friends. On the other hand, after elapse of a certain time from the end of the earthquake, most people start calling or emailing for the safety confirmation, and thus mobile-service providers previously shut down telephone lines or significantly restrict the number of available lines so as to prevent their lines from being flooded. It is said that the above certain time is about ten minutes. Thus, it is not actually possible to make the safety confirmation by using the telephone lines after elapse of about ten minutes after the end of the earthquake.
The systems described in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication Nos. 2010-087683 and 2010-263562 can confirm the safety of users of the mobile terminals but fail to assist actions after the disaster. For example, immediately after a big earthquake, power outage, fire, water pipe explosion, road cave-in, sediment disaster, and/or the like may occur to cause a traffic jam, making it difficult for the people to return home when they have been involved in the disaster at a place away from home. Train services are halted for a long time, and buses and taxis are stuck in traffic jams, so that movement of the people is significantly restricted. It follows that the people are forced to walk home or to their offices.
However, in most cases, many people do not grasp how to return home or to the offices from where they are now, and they may be at a loss in an unexpected fashion. Even if a direction toward the destination is roughly known, it is unexpectedly difficult to get to the destination through roads that have never been used before. As a result, it may take a long time to get home due to going wrong way and, in the worst case, they cannot get home before the day is done. Further, it can be imagined that they may get overtired and give up returning home.
Further, there is recently known a web service that acquires current location information using a GPS function of a mobile phone and displays on a map a shortest path to a predetermined destination from the current location. However, in the situation where the telephone lines are shut down or significantly restricted, such a service cannot be provided.